We are right in the middle of moving across state lines to be closer to my parents so we’ve been eating from the freezer and stockpile quite a bit this month, but I was still surprised to come in so far below my monthly budget of $300! For the month of June I spent $80.11 to buy $390.51 worth of groceries, toiletries, and cleaning supplies, or a savings of 79%! According to the spreadsheet I’ve spent $802.58 so far this year for $3,220.48 worth of stuff, or 75% off. That equates to an average of $134 per month for our family of six, or 74¢ a day per person! Of course I’ll need to start stocking up the freezers again once the move is finally over, but it feels good to be keeping expenses down right now while we’re having all these additional moving costs.

We’ve been eating from the freezer and stockpile quite a bit this month, but I was still surprised to come in so far below my monthly budget of $300! For the month of March I spent $182.43 to buy $677.12 worth of groceries, toiletries, and cleaning supplies, or a savings of 73%! According to the spreadsheet I’ve spent $500.50 so far this year for $1,975.52 worth of stuff, or 75% off. That equates to an average of $167 per month for our family of six, or 93¢ a day per person!

Here is my year at a glance for 2012 – I’m very proud of these numbers and excited to share, but honestly I’m looking forward to beating them in 2013! I’d like to thank Angela at The Coupon Project again for putting the spreadsheet together that I’m using. I’d highly recommend that you download Angela’s new updated version of the savings tracker spreadsheet for my favorite price – free!

This year I bought $10,582.20 worth of products for only $2,584.30, or 76% off. Take a look at the ‘coupons’ and ‘discounts’ columns and you’ll see that less than half of the $6,763.02 that I saved was from coupons and the majority was from sales. That shows that you can save 30-50% without clipping a single coupon if you simply buy things when they’re on sale, and buy enough to keep you until the next sale. So how much you want to save and how much time you want to spend are completely up to you, but you CAN do this!

For 2012 I set a budget of $300 per month for our family of seven, plus two cats and a dog. That’s $69/week ($3,600/52 weeks) or $10 per person, which I felt was reasonable and still allowed for some room in the budget to expand the stockpile. I’m thrilled and more than a little surprised that I actually spent an average of $50/week for all of 2012! Even though that’s just a little over $7 per week per person, I’m still going to keep the budget at $3,600 for the new year, $300 per month or around $70 a week. The kids are growing fast and seem to be eating more every day so I hesitate to lower the goal at this point. Considering that I used to spend around $325-350 a WEEK, I’m very excited to know that we can easily live with a grocery budget of just $300 a month!

We had a few extra expenses around Thanksgiving so I was really pretty surprised that we were able to stay $75 under our current monthly budget of $300! For the month of November we spent $225.48 to buy $920.05 worth of groceries, toiletries, and cleaning supplies, or a savings of 76%! According to the spreadsheet we’ve spent $2,388.92 so far this year for $9,947.56 worth of stuff, or 76% off. That equates to an average of $217 per month for our family of seven, or $1.03 a day per person!

This was a pretty good month since we were able to stay $97 under our current monthly budget of $300! For the month of October we spent $202.51 to buy $772.66 worth of groceries, toiletries, and cleaning supplies, or a savings of 74%! According to the spreadsheet we’ve spent $2,163.44 so far this year for $9,027.51 worth of stuff, or 76% off. That equates to an average of $216 per month for our family of seven, or $1.03 a day per person!

We’ve had a few unexpected expenses lately like new tires, brakes and rotors for the car so we really cut back everywhere else that we could this month. I’m grateful that we had a stockpile, pantry and freezer full of food so we basically just bought the essentials and the best bargain deals this month and we were able to get by without really feeling the pinch. Of course we’re going to need to make another big meat purchase soon, but we’ll be fine until the next great bulk meat deal comes along. This is actually the cheapest month we’ve had so far this year and we were able to stay $161 under our current monthly budget of $300! For the month of September we spent $138.52 to buy $615.79 worth of groceries, toiletries, and cleaning supplies, or a savings of 78%! According to the spreadsheet we’ve spent $1,960.93 so far this year for $8,254.85 worth of stuff, or 77% off. That equates to an average of $218 per month for our family of seven, or $1.04 a day per person!

August turned out to be a pretty crazy month with all the back to school activities and purchases, and with our evacuation last week due to Hurricane Isaac. I have to admit that when I did my usual shopping trips a couple of days before the hurricane hit it felt great to have a stockpile already so I could just be doing a normal trip instead of buying a bunch of last minute hurricane supplies like everyone else. Since we were able to stretch out our back to school purchases over the past year, starting with last year’s clearance sales, we were able to stay nearly $79 under our current monthly budget of $300! For the month of August we spent $221.03 to buy $851.47 worth of groceries, toiletries, and cleaning supplies, or a savings of 75%! According to the spreadsheet we’ve spent $1,822.41 so far this year for $7,639.06 worth of stuff, or 77% off. That equates to an average of $228 per month for our family of seven, or $1.08 a day per person!

Although we didn’t go over our current monthly budget of $300, we did come pretty close this month! I made a bunch of back to school purchases including backpacks for all five kids so I think it’s terrific that we came in under budget at all. We do have a few more things to get before school start in a couple weeks, but there isn’t much left on that list so I’m hoping that we come in way under budget in August so I can go over budget during the fall holiday months without worry. For the month of July we spent $290.26 to buy $796.55 worth of groceries, toiletries, and cleaning supplies, or a savings of 64%! According to the spreadsheet we’ve spent $1,601.38 so far this year for $6,787.59 worth of stuff, or 77% off. That equates to an average of $229 per month for our family of seven, or $1.09 a day per person!

We haven’t made any bulk meat purchases from Zaycon Foods since January and we’re really getting slim in the freezer so I just ordered 40 pounds of lean ground beef that will be delivered in a couple weeks. I’m amazed that even after spending $130 on that meat purchase we still came in $85 under our current monthly budget of $300! For the month of June we spent $214.97 to buy $986.15 worth of groceries, toiletries, and cleaning supplies, or a savings of 78%! According to the spreadsheet we’ve spent $1,311.12 so far this year for $5,991.04 worth of stuff, or 78% off. That equates to an average of $219 per month for our family of seven, or around a dollar a day per person!

We made one bulk meat purchase from Zaycon Foods back in January and haven’t bought any meat since then until the Memorial Day sales over the past week. I’ve picked up 60 pounds of chicken leg quarters, a slab of ribs, a whole pork loin and a sirloin tip roast this week to re-stock the freezer a little so I’m amazed that we still came in $22 under our current monthly budget of $300! We’d been trying to use up everything in the freezer since the first of the year so I’m really thrilled to have a tiny bit more variety in there now. For the month of May we spent $277.94 to buy $911.02 worth of groceries, toiletries, cleaning supplies and gifts, or a savings of 70%! According to the spreadsheet we’ve spent $1,096.15 so far this year for $5,004.89 worth of stuff, or 79% off. That equates to an average of $219 per month for our family of seven, or around a dollar a day per person!

Hello there, I’m Denise!

I'm a professional blogger, social media consultant, and working mom of eleven year old quadruplets and a twelve year old son. I enjoy sharing shopping, fashion, beauty and travel tips as well as recipes and reviews from a frugal shop-a-holic with expensive tastes! Click here to contact me or learn more about me.

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